People Australia

Valerie Maud Budd née Brett, formerly Townend (1898-1970) community worker and political activist

Birth: 1898 in Gulgong, New South Wales, daughter of Charles George Bernard Brett, agent, and Fanny May, née Little. Marriage: (1) 14 October 1915 at Paddington, to Alec Raymond Townend. The marriage ended in divorce on 4 December 1930. (2) 18 November 1933 at St Michael’s Anglican church, Surry Hills, Sydney, to Harold Leonard Budd (1891-1957), a NSW-born dancing instructor and insurance agent. They had one daughter. Death: 20 January 1970 in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, Sydney. Religion: Anglican. 

• Prominent in the Botany branch of the Australian Labor Party and organiser of its younger set. In 1935, concerned that business girls on the basic wage needed affordable clothes for leisure, she formed a class for cutting and designing evening frocks. That year she was also involved in the annual spring ball of the combined Labor younger sets, for which her husband was master of ceremonies.
• Vice-president of Women’s Central Organising Committee of the ALP in 1934.
• President of the Malabar branch of the ALP in 1938, which supported the election of R. J. Heffron. She was a delegate to the Labor Unity Conference that year. In 1939 she was secretary of the Little Bay branch of the ALP and active in preventing evacuation of families at Bombora Point settlement, Yarra Bay.
• In December 1935 she was appointed a justice of the peace. Became a member of the NSW Women Justices’ Association, of which she was press secretary in the 1950s. In 1953 she was active in the association urging government to safeguard patients in private hospitals and convalescent homes and in 1954 urging protection of deserted wives.
• Cause of death: cardiogenic shock, myocardial infarction and hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

Sources
Labor Daily (Sydney), 8 May 1934, p 8, 7 June 1935, p 14, 9 October 1936, p 14, 28 February 1938, p 10, and 26 April 1938, p 7; Sun (Sydney), 10 November 1935, p 7, and 17 September 1939, p 5, and 21 April 1953, p 3; Daily News (Sydney), 30 October 1939, p 5.